


Years to Find You

by Glitteringworlds



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitteringworlds/pseuds/Glitteringworlds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The waiting isn't the only hard part. Figuring out what to do once you have found each other is a strange dance all it's own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years to Find You

## 1.

Ophelia dreams of a girl with long hair and an easy smile, light on her feet. She sketches out stories in her head of the two of them fighting evil, toppling kingdoms, standing back to back and facing the oncoming hordes. They don’t always win, but if they die, they die together, hand in hand. As it should be.

## 2.

There are days when the sun is too bright and the hot air is like a sweaty hand at the back of her neck, when Soleil shrugs out of her heavy padded leather and lazes away the afternoon in some lonely sliver of shade, days when she lets daydreams take her down familiar paths, days when she wonders if this is all she will ever have. If hot summer will melt and blend into hot summer, and time will pass, and nothing will change. It wouldn’t be so bad, she thinks. Maybe a little boring. Maybe a little empty.

## 3.

As with all things its not the way Ophelia imagined it. The hair is shorter, and she’s not so lithe, not so graceful. But when Soleil shoves past a nearby soldier and slices through another, stance heavy, movements sure and even, she turns, and smiles.

Later, Ophelia learns her name, and she thinks:  _just like a fragment of sunshine, yes, that seems right, a crystal-sharp little bit of it._

And she thinks:  _I could write poetry about the dip of her head or the calluses on her hand, the shining arc of her sword._

And then she thinks: _Uh-oh_

## 4.

Soleil catalogues it all, everything Ophelia says, and whispers it back to herself on cold mornings, clutching a cup of steaming tea and waiting for it to burn away sleep from the inside out. She’s never had a way with words, the way that girl does.

Ophelia, Ophelia, she’d court her if they weren’t at war, she’d rescue her from a tower and slay a dragon, she’d climb a mountain if it came it that, but it never comes to that. Whenever Soleil gets close it’s a mess of mumbles and blushing, and there’s only so much to do from far away. Battles scars and fresh bright bruises might impress village girls, but in the midst of things it’s a lot of sweat and blood and the stink of death, and a great deal harder to catch someone’s eye and wink.

And of course, of course it had to be Odin’s daughter, the daughter of a friend of a father she can’t look in the eye when he asks her if their is anyone in the army who has caught her attention, any strapping lad or fine young woman, any brave soldier she’s fought alongside.

He laughs when she doesn’t answer. It’s a knowing laugh, and he ruffles her hair and tells her not to give up, to which part of her replies:  _oh if only you knew._

The other part, smaller, firmer, lodged somewhere far away from the rest of her thoughts, says:  _okay_.

## 5.

When they finally start to learn each other, not just distant silhouettes but the dirty, tarnished truth of things, when she feels the first twinges of annoyance and frustration, Ophelia finds, to her pleasant surprise, that she likes them much better than the stories she used to tell.

They aren’t as glamorous, certainly, but it’s comforting to know the she isn’t alone in hating eggs and being sluggish in the morning. When you spend too long being a story in your own head, it’s nice to be reminded that you aren’t the only one who has less thematically appropriate flaws.

Besides, stories can’t bring you flowers or cups of tea in the morning, can’t belt out sorely off-key ballads, can’t wrap a firm hand around your waist to pull you away from the path of a swinging sword.

Ophelia is pleased, also, to note that they are indeed callused as she at imagined, rough and steady.

## 6.

When Soleil wakes with a silent shudder from a nightmare that is not so new but somehow unfamiliar, a perfect summer day smeared red, it takes her a second to realize that it is Ophelia’s death she dreamed of this time, not her own.

It takes her just a half second longer to search out Ophelia’s hand in the darkness and pull it against her chest, heaving, gulping, waiting for something like calm. She doesn’t want to wake the other woman, doesn’t want to break the quiet, but all she can remember is the stillness of those endless days, the stagnant press, the emptiness.

But she remembers, also, words, and the blinking of a million stars somewhere beyond the canvas blackness of the tent, and she remembers the way it sounds when Ophelia says her name.

Soleil sighs, a shuddering sigh tipping just on the brink of tears. She scoots herself forward until she can feel Ophelia’s heat, until she can reach out and gently cup the back of her neck and lean in, pressing lips against her forehead in silent gratitude.

There is a scar, a little curving crescent of a thing, that cuts just across the edge of Ophelia’s jawline and down around her ear, and Soleil runs her finger along it, thinking it’s a wonder she’s never noticed it before, thinking

_I want to know you, oh mighty Chosen One, my darling butterfly, daughter of kings, I want to know every inch of you until I can call you up in my mind on the slowest, longest day, until every empty space of the year is filled with you and with my loving you._

And she goes to sleep again.


End file.
